


Spring Day

by aschuylersister



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/M, all your favs make cameos, background Gigolas if you squint, regency au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21985996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aschuylersister/pseuds/aschuylersister
Summary: Aragorn Strider went to university to make his family proud, not to integrate into the upper reaches of society. But with nowhere to go for the holidays, he’s stuck following his best friend Legolas Greenleaf around a string of upper crust parties, where every young man has a manor and every young lady has a scheming mother. But when Legolas’s childhood friend, the beautiful Lady Arwen Rivendell, starts showing up at all the same parties, Aragorn begins to realize that while he may not have a manor, he may have something he wants after all.[Regency AU. Aragorn is dense. Legolas is gay. Everyone is the same in Middle-Earth or in Jane Austen England. It’s a good time.]
Relationships: Aragorn | Estel/Arwen Undómiel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 35
Collections: Tolkien Secret Santa 2019





	Spring Day

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [@svetlacreates](https://svetlacreates.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr for Tolkien Secret Santa! Thanks for being down for my AU obsession, hope you love and happy holidays!

**1\. Brandybuck House. December 12, 1782.**

When Aragorn Strider, an English expatriate by blood who lacked both fortune and a family name, turned eighteen years old, his father told him a story.

A story about a great house, broken in a war many years ago, where at the end, the false heirs to the family fortune resided in the great ancestral home at Whitehall, and the true heirs fell into ruin.

But the time has come, Aragorn’s father said, to reclaim that title. The time had come for Aragorn to go home.

He gave Aragorn a complicated legal document explaining the blood ties linking Aragorn to the Whitehall fortune, and an acceptance letter to Cambridge. Aragorn wasn’t even aware he’d applied.

_ Get an education. Bing honor to our family. Make us proud. _

The only home Aragorn’s ever known is the Welsh countryside - moors and hills and frigid air and millions and millions of stars.

At any rate, Aragorn is happy at Cambridge. He likes to learn, he likes his friends, and he likes having an excuse to avoid showing up at Whitehall with a legal document dictating nothing short of a total handing over of their house and fortune to a stranger with two pounds to his name. 

Legolas, the dashing, roguish blond with whom Aragorn shares a flat, thinks he should get it over with. Legolas is at Cambridge because he got bored working for his father. Legolas really should stop giving advice.

When December rolls around, and school is dismissed for Christmastime Aragorn finds himself in a bit of a dilemma. He realizes with sudden clarity that he has no desire to return home and face his father with the news that the letter for Whitehall has been sitting untouched in a drawer since he got to England.

So when Legolas begs him to go home with him, Aragorn is unable to refuse.

“It’s just an endless string of parties,” Legolas bemoans, facedown on his bed at noon. “And because of my father I’m expected to appear at  _ all _ of them. They are  _ mind-numbingly _ boring.  _ Please _ save me from this torture. Or at least stand in the corner and drink with me.”

Which is how Aragorn finds himself at Brandybuck House on a snowy December evening, dressed in uncomfortably stiff dress clothes and holding a crystal glass of punch. As far as upper crust society houses go, Aragorn has to say he was expecting worse. The Brandybucks are tenants of Legolas’s family, the Greenleafs, but Legolas was childhood friends with the Brandybuck’s son, Meriadoc. Merry seems to be an alright sort of fellow, a gracious host, running around filling everyone’s cups, laughing and shouting to guests from across the room. Legolas hangs back, watching him with a slight smile, so Aragorn does too.

“Not my usual crowd,” Legolas says at one point. “But Merry and I go so far back, I couldn’t turn him down.”

Aragorn is content to sip punch and talk to no one except Legolas. That’s what he’s expected from this entire holiday season, at any rate. Watching Merry Brandybuck and his friend, Pippin Took, sing drinking songs and be general spectacles is amusement enough.

That is, until the door opens and Legolas’s face lights up without warning. “Oh thank God. Arwen! You came!”

The most beautiful woman Aragorn has ever seen is gliding through the door, shaking the snow from a velvet cloak and handing it to Merry, who greets her with a huge smile and a kiss on her knuckles. Her dark hair is pinned up in coils on top of her head, and studded with seed pearls. Her crystal blue eyes are crinkled in a smile, and she makes her way gracefully over to Legolas and Aragorn, silvery beaded dress swishing across the floor with every step.

“Of course I came!” she exclaims with a beam, and her voice is like river water smoothing across stones. “I’ve missed you, old friend! I want to hear everything about Cambridge.”

Legolas grins conspiratorially. “Well, you’ll have to hear it from me and my friend. Lady Rivendell, I’d like to introduce you to my newest and dearest friend, Mr. Strider.”

And suddenly that blinding crystal gaze is turned on him, and Aragorn finds he cannot breathe.

“A pleasure, Lady Rivendell,” is all he gets out, and Legolas’s incredulous stare, is easily readable as  _ What the fuck, man? _

Arwen, for her part, merely laughs, a bell-like, tinkling sound that makes Aragorn’s heart skip about four beats. 

“An interesting name,” she says, slowly spinning the champagne glass in her hand. “Is your family originally from England?”

“Yes,” Aragorn stiffly, because that’s true.

To Aragorn’s relief, Arwen doesn’t press, she merely smiles.

Arwen stays with Legolas and Aragorn for the rest of the evening, and within ten minutes Aragorn is almost entirely certain he’s never met anyone he’s liked better in his entire life. It’s quite unfair, the way Arwen seems to outshine the candlelight, the way she can guess what he’s going to say before he says it, the way her eyes on him feel like an anchor pulling him to the bottom of the sea.

Legolas says something, and Arwen laughs again, and Aragorn takes a rather ungentlemanly swig of punch.

At one point, Legolas excuses himself, and Aragorn and Arwen are alone, and at first Aragorn is afraid the conversation will stall out but to his surprise it only picks up. Arwen is brilliant, and kind and lovely and Aragorn reminds himself that whatever happens he should thank Legolas for dragging him here.

It takes a minute, because he’s so entranced listening to Arwen tell a story about her twin brothers, students at Oxford, but eventually he realizes that everyone is focused on some racket happening in the center of the room. Aragorn and Arwen turn to the source of the commotion, which appears to be Merry and Pippin singing a drinking song and dancing, barefoot, on the dining room table. Aragorn looks over at Arwen, but she doesn’t seem to be particularly horrified. In fact, she’s laughing. 

“I’ve missed this,” she calls to Aragorn over the sound of shrieking fiddle and stomping feet. “My father’s parties are always so boring!”

“Yes well,” Aragorn replies, deftly spinning in front of Arwen to shield her and her fancy dress as someone goes flying past with an overflowing drink. “It’s certainly not what I expected.”

Arwen grins at him, and the corners of her eyes crinkle up. “And what did you expect, Mr. Strider?”

The gems in her hair look like starlight. Aragorn wants to reach out and touch one. “If I’m being quite honest,” he says before he can think too hard about it, “no one quite like you.”

Arwen just smiles, tongue caught between her teeth. “I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment.”

_ Please do _ , Aragorn thinks as he raises his glass to his lips.  _ I’ll never say anything again that isn’t a compliment to you _ .

**2\. Stonefield, December 15, 1782.**

If Aragorn thought Brandybuck House was nice, Stonefield is another level. The gargantuan stone house looks like it was carved from rock, and it boasts an incredible view of craggy mountains in the distance. The driveway has been lit with torches that flicker across a line of carriages waiting to pull up to the entryway and drop off their passengers. 

Aragorn and Legolas have just gotten down from Legolas’s carriage, but Aragorn can already tell something is off with his friend. He’s looking around with a strange expression that seems to be composed of expectation and nerves, and he’s twisting his hands in his coattails. To their left, a gilded silver carriage rolls quietly up the snowy drive, and Legolas points to it distractedly. “Ah. That’d be the Rivendell carriage.”

“The what-” Aragorn says with a start, but before he can finish the thought, he’s interrupted by the familiar sound of bell-like laughter.

“Mr. Greenleaf,” Arwen calls from the open window of the carriage, as it pulls to a stop near Legolas and Aragorn. “What a lovely surprise! I didn’t expect to see you again until the Baggins’s party next week!”

Legolas shrugs and grins, moving out of the way as the footman hops down from the back of the carriage and opens the door. Legolas gallantly reaches up, and Arwen rests a slim, gloved hand delicately on his palm as she steps down into the snow. Her dress tonight is a deep river blue, embroidered with delicate white flowers.

“Wild horses couldn’t keep me away. My father isn’t here, though.” At this, Legolas and Arwen exchange a knowing glance. Aragorn stands awkwardly to the side, until Arwen turns to him and his whole world lights up.

“Mr. Strider! How lovely to see you again too!” She extends a hand, and Aragorn kisses it gently.

“Where you can find Legolas, you can find me, it would seem.”

Arwen opens her mouth to say something else, but they’re interrupted by a strong Scots accent shouting “Laddie!”

A hulking shape flies past them directly into Legolas, and the two figures go down into the snow. Arwen laughs and deftly steps around them to stand at Aragorn’s side.

“And that would be Gimli. He and Legolas are very close.”

“Yes, I think Legolas has mentioned him before,” Aragorn says, but in truth he listens to about a quarter of what Legolas says. But it’s easy to see from the blinding grin on Legolas’s face as the two tussle in the snowy drive, attracting horrified stares from other guests getting out of their carriages, that he’s missed his friend. “What did he mean, about his father not coming?”

Arwen’s face falls slightly. “Gimli’s family is from Scotland. Many old families in this area, mine among them, are a bit unkind towards them, English pride and all that. But Legolas’s father hates them more than anyone.”

“Ah,” Aragorn says, because he isn’t sure what else he can say. “That is unfortunate.”

Arwen catches her lip between her teeth, eyes fixed on the two figures rolling around in the snow. “It’s hard on Legolas.” Suddenly, her crystal gaze swivels to Aragorn, and he’s pinned down by twin flames. “You understand, don’t you?”

Aragorn doesn’t, not really, but he hates to disappoint Arwen so he nods.

Inside, the party is much bigger than the Brandybuck’s, and Aragorn couldn’t hope to meet half the people here in one evening. Legolas has disappeared, but Aragorn isn’t complaining because Arwen doesn’t leave his side the whole night. He’s hyper-aware of her gloved hand tucked under his arm, and he’s hyper-aware of the way everyone in the house stares at her as they walk by.

“Let’s go outside,” Arwen says at a point, and Aragorn cannot refuse. They sit at the edge of the enormous artificial lake to the side of the house, and he loses track of how long they talk about nothing at all. Arwen kicks one of her shoes off to the side, and trails her toes through water that must be icy cold. Her skin catches the moonlight, and Aragorn feels like he’s in a dream. Before he knows it, he’s telling her everything - about his father, about his family, about Whitehall. About the letter sitting in his desk. About how afraid he is. About how he’s afraid he’s going to ruin someone’s life, about how he’s afraid he might be ruining his own.

“Well, what do  _ you _ want,” Arwen asks, and besides Legolas, she’s the first person who’s ever asked him that question.

“I don’t know,” Aragorn says, almost automatically, but if he thinks hard enough he does know. “I want to be a barrister, I think. At least, courses in law interest me. It would break my father’s heart.”

Arwen glances away and smiles. “Well, perhaps someday someone will write that hearts are made to be broken.”

“Perhaps someday yours never will,” he says, and he doesn’t know what he’s saying but he’s praying that this night will never end.

“Is it crazy,” she begins, and Aragorn already knows that she could say anything and it would make perfect sense to him, “that I feel I’ve known you my entire life?”

Aragorn is dizzy, and he’s not sure if it’s the champagne or the stars or Arwen’s perfume.

“No,” he says, even as he feels his heart beginning to shatter. “I don’t think that’s crazy at all.”

**3\. Bag End, December 19, 1782.**

This party, Aragorn thinks decisively, is a bit more of the sort he imagined a young Legolas to have spent his formative years. There are lace doilies covering every visible surface, and the only drink being served is straight champagne in long crystal flutes. A string quartet is playing classical strains in the background, and the young Mr. Baggins is holding an altogether civil conversation with a tall, elderly man with a long gray beard.

Legolas is off talking to another party guest - Gimli, Aragorn thinks dimly, but he barely got a glance at the man at the party at Stonefield and Legolas knows so many people - so Aragorn is stuck being a wallflower again with his glass of champagne. That is, until Mr. Baggins apparently decides it’s his job as a host to help one wayward university student make society friends.

“Mr. Strider,” Mr. Baggins calls, waving Aragorn over with a grin. “I want you to meet one of my dearest friends! This is Mr. Stewardson! He lives in Whitehall, over to the east.”

Mr. Stewardson has dark hair and grey eyes, just like Aragorn. When he shakes his hand, he blinks at him as if he’s seen a ghost.

“Say, have I met you before?” His brow is creased, but not in malice, he only looks at Aragorn with the quizzical expression of someone trying to remember a friend.

“I don’t believe so,” Aragorn says, as if in a daze. “It’s funny though, I was thinking the exact same thing.”

Mr. Stewardson grins suddenly, and claps Aragorn on the shoulder. “Well, don’t be a stranger! Mr. Strider, you said? Where are you from?”

Ten minutes later, Aragorn knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he cannot give Boromir Stewardson the letter in his desk.

He cannot remove a man from the only home he’s ever known, the house he speaks of with the same reverence as if he was talking about one of the great cathedrals of Paris.

He feels sick, he feels dizzy, he feels lost, he feels like the world is crashing down around him.

Someone taps on his shoulder.

Arwen is holding her hand out, when did Arwen get here? Arwen is smiling at him softly like she knows the thoughts rattling around inside his head word for word, and nothing else matters in the whole world.

“Dance with me, Mr. Strider,” she says, and Aragorn does not dance but he’s helpless but to take her hand and let her lead him out onto the floor. The room is spinning,  _ they’re _ spinning, and Aragorn doesn’t know how to dance but he’d spin all night if he never had to let her go.

That night, Aragorn sits on the edge of his bed, lost in thought for a long time. He walks to his desk, and removes a stained, yellowing envelope from the top drawer. The seal of Whitehall is stamped in the top corner.

Aragorn touches the paper to the lamp burning on the nightstand. He holds onto it until the flames lick his fingers, and drops it to the floor and presses firmly down on the ashes with the toe of his boot.

He sleeps well for the first time in months.

**4\. Mirkwood Manor, December 22, 1782.**

If Aragorn had to pick a word to describe Legolas’s ancestral home, it would be  _ dreary _ . The trees, coated in snow, hang imperiously and ominously over the faded facade, and the drive is long, steep and winding. 

He’s been staying here as a guest for weeks, yet seeing it lit up for a grand ball makes it seem like something else altogether.

Legolas is standing with his father to greet guests, so Aragorn skulks around with yet another glass of champagne, hoping to see a familiar face. He is able to greet Mr. Baggins and Mr. Brandybuck by name, as well as a few others, and he feels a dull, sweet ache in his chest when he spots Mr. Stewardson laughing with Mr. Brandybuck in the corner.

But the one face he is hoping to see does not arrive until about an hour into the party. She’s on the arm of a man who is clearly her father, imperious and well-dressed with a hawklike gaze that Aragorn struggles to stand up straight under.

“Lord Rivendell,” Legolas mutters, almost mockingly.

Aragorn raises his eyebrows. “A problem?”

Legolas laughs slightly. “Oh, he and my father go so far back, our families being part of the same old money society and all that. But the number of things they see eye to eye on could fit through the eye of a needle. The only reason they stayed civil all these years is some desperate hope that Arwen and I might someday be wed. Imagine our children. Imagine the trust fund.”

Aragorn watches as Legolas’s father and Lord Rivendell shake hands, Arwen standing to the side with a blank, gracious smile.

Arwen. And Legolas.

Aragorn cannot say he’s surprised, and he hardly has any place to be disappointed. So he tries to keep as much bitterness out of his voice as possible when he says “So when can I expect the engagement announcement?” From Legolas, there is only stunned silence. Aragorn scowls. “What’s wrong now?” 

“You fool,” Legolas says, blinking at him rapidly, like some sort of strange, golden owl. “You absolute idiot.” 

Aragorn is taken aback. “I- What?”

“I don’t want to marry  _ Arwen _ ,” Legolas says, and the absolute disgust in his voice is enough to make Aragorn more than confused.

“But you just said-”

“It doesn’t matter what my father wants,” Legolas says suddenly, so savagely that for a moment it doesn’t sound like him. “I’ll never marry anyone. Certainly not Arwen. I…  _ can’t _ love Arwen,” he says, and his voice is pained. “Not like that.”

And suddenly about a dozen things click into place, and all Aragorn can say is “ _ oh _ .”

“Yeah,” Legolas says, his soft laugh devoid of any humor. “ _ Oh _ .”

“For what it’s worth,” Aragorn says gently. “It doesn’t matter to me. You’re my friend, Legolas. It doesn’t matter to me.”

Legolas swirls champagne around his glass in slow circles, like ocean waves. He looks up at Aragorn, and he smiles. “For what it’s worth, I think she cares about you too.”

Legolas retires with a headache about an hour after that, and Aragorn finds he is altogether done with holiday parties. Sitting in the dark library listening to the din outside isn’t much, but it’s better than being alone out there.

So when he hears low voices in the secluded hallway outside, he cannot make any claim to eavesdropping, only that moving to alert his presence would be a fate worse than death.

“I don’t know, father,” he can hear Arwen saying in a low, pained voice. “I do not wish to marry Mr. Greenleaf. And I certainly don’t think he has any desire to marry me either.”

“That’s alright,” he can hear her father saying. “I have no need of you to marry, we are more than comfortable. Perhaps if you spent some time with your mother’s family, though. A change of faces.”

“I don’t need a change of faces,” Arwen says abruptly, so un-ladylike and un- _ Arwen _ like that Aragorn tenses. “I… I’ve already met the man I want to marry.”

Aragorn can’t see Mr. Rivendell, but in the terse silence he can almost imagine his face. “And who might that be?” he says, voice unreadable.

Aragorn cannot breathe.

“Mr. Strider.” Arwen’s voice is steady. Final. A challenge.

Aragorn counts to ten before Mr. Rivendell speaks again. “He has turned down the Whitehall fortune. He has left it to the Stewardsons. He has no fortune, no property, and a completely fabricated name. If you married him, your situation in life would instantly become unstable.”

Aragorn’s entire being is buzzing with nerves.  _ How can he possibly know? _

“I know,” Arwen says, and her voice is rich with despair. “It’s one of the reasons why I care for him so.”

“It’s one of the reasons why you have to let him go.”

The voices move away, and Aragorn does not leave the library until sunlight streams through the window and every single guest in Mirkwood has gone home.

**5\. Rivendell. December 24, 1782.**

Arwen’s home is the most beautiful place he’s ever seen. From the elegant, flowing lines of the house, to the beautiful meadow bordering the lake, to the golden forest at the edge of the road, he understands with sudden clarity so much about who Arwen is.

Inside, a servant takes his coat, and he stares in wonder at the tallest pine tree he’s ever seen, lit with candles like stars. Mr. Rivendell himself comes over to greet him and Legolas, and Aragorn tries not to flinch when he shakes his hand.

“And where is the Lady Rivendell,” Legolas inquires politely? “I thought for certain she wouldn’t miss a chance to greet her guests.”

Mr. Rivendell is speaking to Legolas, but his eyes hold Aragorn’s gaze. “I’m afraid Lady Rivendell has gone to stay with her mother’s family in Paris -- for a change of scenery. She won’t be back for some time.”

Legolas dances, and Aragorn stands in the snowy drive alone. He will not come back here, he thinks to himself hazily. No, he will not come back here again.

**6\. London. Four months later.**

Being a barrister is working out well enough for Aragorn. He makes a decent living, he enjoys what he does, and he sends money home to his mother every month. His father hasn’t sent word, but Aragorn didn’t expect him to. Legolas visits often, which works out well because neither of them have any interest in frequenting brothels the way Aragorn’s colleagues like to do on the weekends. Instead they sit in Aragorn’s apartment and drink, and Legolas’s gossip is much more interesting now that Aragorn can match faces to the names.

The one name Legolas never mentions is Arwen. 

And in a quiet part of himself, Aragorn has begun to accept that he might never hear that name again.

So one spring day, sitting in his office sorting through paperwork, the last face he expects to see when the bell on his door chimes in a visitor is hers.

“Hello Mr. Strider,” she says with a slight smile. She’s holding a lace parasol, and her dress is splashed with blue pinstripes and her eyes are glittering and Aragorn for the life of him cannot find anything to do or say but let his jaw go slack and his quill fall from his hand. “Well, say something,” she says at last, her face coloring slightly. “Are you not happy to see me?”

“I thought you were in Paris,” Aragorn breathes, and that’s the wrong answer entirely but he can’t find anything else in his mind at the moment.

“I was,” she says, biting her lip. “And then I realized that my heart was breaking in two, and when Legolas wrote that you were in London I decided that the only thing to do was to see you. So here I am.”

Aragorn slowly stands and comes around the side of his desk, wary, heart beating so fast he can barely feel it, wondering if this is in fact some sort of fever dream.

“But your father-”

Arwen cuts him off with a small laugh. “-will live. He’s got two strapping sons to carry the family name and fortune. I know my father. And all he’s ever wanted is for me to be happy. And my happiness, it would seem, is not in Paris.”

Aragorn kisses her, and suddenly, winter is over. It’s spring again. And the world has been made new.


End file.
